Then Mrs. Carruthers awoke fully, and to an instantaneous comprehension that something was wrong. All her fears, all her suspicions of the day before, returned to her mind in one flash of apprehension, and she sat up white and breathless. "What is it, Ellen? Has he found out? Does he know?" "Who? What do you mean?" "Mr. Carruthers. Does he know George was here?" "God forbid!" said the old woman, in a trembling tone. She felt the task she had before her almost beyond her power of execution. But her mistress's question, her instinctive fear, had given her a little help. "No," she said, "he knows nothing, and God send he may neither know nor suspect anything about our dear boy! but you must be quiet now and listen to me, for I must have said my say before Dixon comes--she must not find me here." "Why are you here?" asked Mrs. Carruthers, who had sat up in bed, and was now looking at the old woman, with a face which had no more trace of colour than the pillow from which it had just been raised. "Tell me, Ellen; do not keep me in suspense. Is anything wrong about George? It must concern _him_, whatever it is." "My dear," began Mrs. Brookes--and now she held the slender fingers tightly in her withered palm--"I fear there is something very wrong with George." "Is he--is he dead?" asked the mother, in a faint voice. "No, no; he is well and safe, and far away from this, I hope and trust." Mrs. Carruthers made no answer, but she gazed at her old friend with irresistible, pitiful entreaty. Mrs. Brookes answered the dumb appeal. "Yes, my dear, I'll tell you all. I must, for his sake. Do you know what was the business that brought that strange gentleman here, he that went out with master, and dined here last night? No, you don't. I thought not. Thank God, you have got no hint of it from any one but me." "Go on, go on," said Mrs. Carruthers, in a yet fainter voice. "Do you remember, when George was here in February, you gave him money to buy a coat?" "Yes," Mrs. Carruthers rather sighed than said. "He bought one at Evans's, and he was remarked by the old man, who would know him again if he saw him. The business on which the strange gentleman came to master was to get him to help, as a magistrate, in finding the person who bought that coat at Evans's, Amherst." "But why? What had he done? How was the coat known?" "My dear," said Mrs. Brookes--and now she laid one arm gently round her mistress's shoulder as she leaned against the pillows--"the wearer of that coat is suspected of having murdered a man, whose body was found by the river-side in London the other day." "My God!" moaned the mother, and a hue as of death overspread her features.